By some estimates there could be more than 100 billion potentially habitable planets in our galaxy alone. While “potentially habitable” does not mean a planet is inhabited, if life arose on even a fraction of those worlds […]

“American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage […]

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Ex-emergency manager says he’s not to blame for Flint River water switch

Former Flint EM Darnell Earley: Water switch was local decision By Ron Fonger | rfonger1@mlive.com – on October 13, 2015 at 3:00 PM, updated October 27, 2015 at 1:54 PM (Note: We recommend using Wikipedia for updated information on this disaster.) FLINT, MI […]

The U.S. Constitution spells out the process by which formal changes can be made to it via amendments, and at least two have been proposed since the last, the 27th was ratified in 1992. Many commentators have suggested specific changes that are necessary to keep the Constitution up […]

For a rough idea of what actually happens in Washington, a simple declining balance perspective might help in evaluating the performance of Congress. The 114th Congress considered a total of 7,993 bills. Of these 6,732 were referred to committee, […]

Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way you looked? Did we actually dress like that? We did. And we had no idea how silly we looked. It’s the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the same way the […]

Note: Please review the above chart to see when these mergers/acquisitions got going…1998…so what happened then…see my earlier post about GLBA, and the demise of Glass-Steagall. It is also instructive to see what happened to community banks following the 2008-2009 Depression -a large percentage basically disappeared to be replaced by one of the four […]

Some people say that “Obama hasn’t done anything about XYZ” – completely ignoring the fact that we have a constitutional republic where the Legislature is charged with coming up with ‘big-picture’ legislation and controlling the flow of money into and out of the Government. The executive branch […]

Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act Other short titles Federal Home Loan Bank System Modernization Act of 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 Prime Act Program for Investment in Microentrepreneurs Act of 1999 Long title An Act to enhance competition in the financial services industry by providing a prudential framework for […]

The best known example in film is the classic movie: “The Sting” with Robert Redford and Paul Newman set in 1936; but in literature a much earlier exploration of the confidence game can be read in Herman Melville’s ” The Confidence Man” written in 1857.